Sooo I was bored, yet tired…but not tired enough to go to bed. So, why not draw some fanart, hm?

Ok, this isn’t a specific scene from my fanfiction that I’ve been playing with for a few weeks now – it’s just a random image. The girl’s name is Alita, and she is NOT the Dragonborn in my story. She is, however, close friends with the Dragonborn, Elivina, who is half dark elf/half wood elf. Alita is an imperial. If you notice Alita’s hands, they appear to have red splotches on them. The reason for that is due to her town being burned to the ground when she was a teenager. She had been caught in the fire, and barely escaped alive. Elivina had found her, and with the help of the wood elves, Alita was mostly recovered. The scarring was the worst on her hands and arms, so they couldn’t completely restore her skin back to normal.

Normally, Alita keeps her hands covered with gloves to hide the scarring. Although she never really admits it, she is embarrassed by how her hands look. She also got fed up with everyone and their grandma offering her some miracle salve that would fix her skin, so it’s just easier keeping her scars on the DL. Sometimes she struggles with a weapon because of the nerve damage done to her hands. Elivina has worked with her for years to help her fight again, and for the most part she does fine, but she still battles with occasional numbness that can make her fumble with her weapon unintentionally, so usually she’s better off as a long distance defender rather than an up-close aggressor.

‘Hiril vuin’ is Elvish for ‘My Lady’ – it literally translates to ‘Beloved Lady’. Alita learned a bit of Elvish while living with Elivina, so in my story she taught Casavir this phrase in order for him to use it in reference to Elivina, out of respect for her heritage and to show acceptance for her despite the tensions between the elven races and everyone else. Although Casavir ends up using it more for Alita later on in the story.</p>

I drew her without her gloves in this image with Casavir to emphasize the point of intimacy brought on by exposure of a personal vulnerability. She always hides her hands, and for her to not only have them exposed but to allow him to be that close to her with the scarring in plain sight is a huge thing for her.

“Can the purpose of a relationship be to trigger our wounds? In a way, yes, because that is how healing happens; darkness must be exposed before it can be transformed. The purpose of an intimate relationship is not that it be a place where we can hide from our weaknesses, but rather where we can safely let them go. It takes strength of character to truly delve into the mystery of an intimate relationship, because it takes the strength to endure a kind of psychic surgery, an emotional and psychological and even spiritual initiation into the higher Self. Only then can we know an enchantment that lasts.”